Click anywhere in the image at left to choose a new center,
or use the arrows to pan around this scene.
If this path/row was acquired more than once, then the date
label above becomes a hyperlink that allows you to change to
other dates. FTP access to all of the data
for this path/row/date combination is also provided.

Archive Description

In a NASA-sponsored
partnership between remote sensing scientists,
international agencies and NGOs, new efforts are being
made to (1) develop baseline global reef maps that can
be a foundation for future more detailed investigation,
(2) assemble the key baseline remote sensing data that is
needed for researchers to study coral reef environments,
and (3) partner with international organizations to use
remote sensing data for applied science problems and
improve the management of coral reefs.

The first challenge for global coral reef mapping
with Landsat 7 is in getting global data that
is not obscured by cloud cover. Global data
acquisition for coral reef mapping was initiated
through the Landsat 7 Long Term Acquisition Plan (Gasch
et al. 2000). Once the instrument began acquiring
data over coral reefs, it took several years to get the
needed acquisitions because of tropical cloud cover, and to
find ways to purchase or trade for the nearly 1000 scenes
necessary to complete the global coverage.

This archive contains standardized data that
is tiled, zoomable, and downloadable via FTP .
The archive is under construction and images from the Millennium
Coral Reef Mapping Project are still being added.

Images online in archive: 2101 (includes some non-reef scenes
which are not counted in the number above)

Global coverage is now considered complete.

The collection of this set of
global data was a necessity for the Millennium
Coral Reef Mapping project, and was also
recognized as a need early in discussions between
NASA and NOAA after the establishment of the U.S. Coral Reef Taskforce.
By assembling this data in a single freely accessible
location, the use of Landsat data in a variety of local,
regional, and global mapping projects will become possible.